For almost the entirety of Slope’s existence, there have been ads on the site. Ads have been there for a couple of reasons: (1) To generate some revenue from the folks who didn’t want to be PLUS subscribers (2) to encourage people to become PLUS subscribers, since doing so eliminates the ads from the site.

For the first time in 14 years, however, I am thinking of making the site 100% ad-free. In spite of the direct revenue loss to me personally, I am considering this seriously because (1) the revenue from ads is diminishing to the point of why-even-bother levels (2) it’s beginning to become clear to me how the hideous ads completely wreck the appearance of my beautiful site, such as this monstrosity.

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Word on the street (as well as The Strip) is that a gaggle of Slopers have gathered in Las Vegas – – an irregularly scheduled event that has gone on for many years named SlopeFest. Regrettably, because this is a graduation/end-of-school weekend for my beloved children, I am unable to attend. There will be more pictures to come, particularly tomorrow night, but The Director was kind enough to send this first snapshot (Market Sniper, AKA Dutch, is the mustachioed chap in the back).

I’ve got a huge challenge ahead of me, trying to write up anything about this god-awful market of ours, but – – this isn’t the first time I’ve had to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Shortly after we launched the new site, someone wrote to me to say they had accidentally put someone in the comments stream on Ignore and wanted to un-ignore them. I sheepishly told them that was impossible. With all the other urgent tasks we had with the new site, it just wasn’t high on the list.

I’m glad to say we’ve addressed this now. You already know how to Ignore someone: just click the Ignore button on their comment, and bang, they’ll vanish from your world. But if you want to un-ignore someone (perhaps you miss them, or you did it by accident), what you do is click on the Profile link:

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